thanks man! please report back with confirmation that the new template is correct!

Quote:

Originally Posted by panoz7

Good idea! I added a scale to the template in the first post. As long as the file is printed from acrobat and page-scaling is set to none in the print dialog it should print out at the correct size.

The positioning of the badge should be correct according to the bmw install instructions. The distance between individual letters on the badge may be off by a 10th or a mm or so. They don't match up exactly to what bmw specifies but I don't want to adjust them without knowing the exact width of the individual letters. I'm not sure if it would be possible to line up the letters with that much precision anyway, so I'm not going to worry about it for now. If anybody has some calipers and can measure the exact width of the letters I can update the template.

I'm going to head over to my local dealer in an hour or so to see if the new template lines up, and I'll report back.

i just tried the new template on my stock trunk and the emblems are still a little off but since the new template was corrected with measurements from BMW then that just leads me to believe that the emblems are thrown on at the factory a little off and no ones are precisely where they're supposed to be but to the naked eye it looks alright.

i will still be using panoz7's new template to place my matte black emblems on my iCarbon trunk, and know that they will be placed in the correct spot

Just got back from the dealer. The only conclusion I can come to is that we are for more anal than the workers at the factory who install these things to begin with. My local dealer has 6 convertibles and 1 coupe. Of those there were 5 128s and 2 135s. 1 of the 7 matched my new template exactly. 3 were within a millimeter or two, and the remaining 3 were off by a lot.

I'm pretty sure that my template matches what BMW intended for badge placement. That said, given the huge variance of badge positioning that I witnessed, it's possible that a "correctly" positioned badge may look funny to someone who is used to their current badge's position. I'm honestly pretty surprised that BMW doesn't use a more permanent version of a template like mine when installing the badges to begin with. You'd think it would save time and decrease variations. Who knows...

1 of the 7 matched my new template exactly. 3 were within a millimeter or two, and the remaining 3 were off by a lot.

of the 2 135's, what catagory did they fall in from above? ^^

Quote:

Originally Posted by panoz7

I'm pretty sure that my template matches what BMW intended for badge placement. That said, given the huge variance of badge positioning that I witnessed, it's possible that a "correctly" positioned badge may look funny to someone who is used to their current badge's position. I'm honestly pretty surprised that BMW doesn't use a more permanent version of a template like mine when installing the badges to begin with. You'd think it would save time and decrease variations. Who knows...

+1, i will def be using your new template to place my matte black badges on my iCarbon trunk.

I should also mention that even the ones that were drastically off looked normal until I lined the template up. I think making sure the badge is mounted exactly horizontal is more important than the exact vertical positioning.

yea, looking at my stock trunk closely the emblems don't run parallel with the seam line above the license plate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by panoz7

I should also mention that even the ones that were drastically off looked normal until I lined the template up. I think making sure the badge is mounted exactly horizontal is more important than the exact vertical positioning.

So I just put on my black letters and everything went better than expected.
Good thing you put on a scale next to the template because my printer messed up the first print (way too small).
As you see the letters you put in the template are 100% the same size as the real ones.

It certainly does. I'm really glad it worked for you. Are those the shadow emblems from Bimmian? Is the thickness the adhesive on them noticeable?

i think bimmian is the only place that sells blacked out emblems, the adhesive on the matte emblems of my stock trunk and matte emblems i have to put on my iCarbon trunk are a fraction thicker than the stock ones but is pretty much unnoticeable once on. doesn't bother me one bit....

asking cause the matte emblems on my stock trunk where totally matte and the new ones i picked up for the iCarbon trunk are a semi-matte and have a little gloss to them. JLevi said if i got the gloss badges they'd be noticeably glossy, thanks man!

Quote:

Originally Posted by matt

Yes the glossy ones from bimmian.
Cant compare sticker thivkness to oem but its not noticable.

the thinest 3M double sided tape you can find. but i'd just buy some new OEM or black emblems cause it looks like it'll be too much work to cut out the tape for every letter and the shadow emblems only cost $20

Quote:

Originally Posted by h3opama

I was looking to use the ones that I originally took off though.. - what can I use??